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SOLDIERS FIGHT WARS. A soldier with 20 years of garrison experience is useless, if I'm unhappy about being over here shame on me for re-enlisting 3 times. I raised my right hand as we all did over here, no body put a gun to our heads, and talking smack about my commander in chief will do nothing productive, especially by people who are so many thousands of miles removed from reality. The military is here to fight and win wars, defend the homeland, and the interests of the US.
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Exactly right, Gary.
Being a soldier is a dangerous way to make a living. Soldiers know that. I've been in 3 wars and my buddies and I could have been killed without warning in any of them. Everyone knows that's part of the job.
Civilians sitting at home watching the tube don't seem to understand that soldiers die. It's expected. It's not pleasant, but it's how the job gets done.
I recall seeing a statistic after the 1st Gulf War that said more soldiers would have been killed in car wrecks and other hazards of off-post life than died on duty in the war zone. I doubt that's true this time.
On the other hand, we need to learn how to fight this new kind of war. We won't learn stateside sitting in classrooms.
If we can establish a democratic government in Iraq, that will go a long way toward cooling down the whole area. It's worth the cost to do that.